


toy flowers

by chartreuser



Series: waiting for refuge [2]
Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: M/M, a little interlude to imploring harvest, pre Nicklas Backstrom/Alexander Ovechkin
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-19
Updated: 2017-12-19
Packaged: 2019-02-17 02:28:46
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,746
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13067232
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chartreuser/pseuds/chartreuser
Summary: Nicke hopes he hasn't created for himself a lie in Овечкин, even if it's probable, even if they won't ever meet.





	toy flowers

**Author's Note:**

> this story would make no sense whatsoever without having read [imploring harvest](http://archiveofourown.org/works/12225585) first, so if you think you may be interested in hockey-playing aliens, please check that out! 
> 
> to those of you who are familiar with the aforementioned work: welcome back! and all former content warnings apply. the medical experimentation is a little bit heavier in this one.

In Gavlë, Nicke puts the folder back onto the floor, and pushes it back to the corner behind him. He stands back up and tiptoes to where he’d shifted his cot, to roll it back gently into starting position, where the book is lying. He takes a few steps backwards to survey what he’s done—it looks fine. It looks like Nicke is hiding nothing.

He’s already memorised it: the serial codes, the file names, the Russian spellings. If Nicke loses the folder, it’ll be in his head, at least, and he could buy some pens and paper the next time they let him out to the park, maybe, to transcribe, and then he’ll tuck them in between the pages of the children’s books they let him keep.                                                                                                                             

It’s almost morning, now, according to Nicke’s watch, the one edible thing he has but yet could not eat—he relies on it, and it relies on him, too, to some extent, to keep being functional; Nicke had rescued it from a dumpster somewhere. He keeps it hidden underneath his sleeves, and when they’re going to take him in, he takes it off. He hides it inside the hole in the wall, the one that he keeps his signed pucks in. Well—one signed puck. But it also has a little toy robot, which Nicke loves, even if it is made out of plastic—or maybe he loves it because he can’t digest it, which is another matter entirely. There’s a few synthetic flowers, and some seeds a kind, old woman gave him at the fair, some months back. He spoke to her, and she spoke back: _hello, how are you, i don’t have the money to buy these, i can’t garden, i can’t have these_. But she gave them to him anyway, in their little sachets. Nicke doesn’t know why he kept them. 

But they’re safe, which is what’s important, and no one has found out about this hole in the wall, the little thing he dug out of concrete before they switched his limbs out for human hands. Without the sun, the flowers (which are fake) seem a little sad, and Nicke hopes that when they move him into one of the doctor’s homes, he’ll be given a cell with a window, at least, and maybe they’d be nice enough to let him keep the flowers, and if he finds a spot, maybe he could learn to garden.

 

::

 

Nicke thinks about this Александр Овечкин all the time; this little green boy that’s not really a boy—the same way that Nicke isn’t a boy, the same way that Nicke is barely a person. He wishes they could speak; Nicke doesn’t know if he knows how to talk, in the same manner that Nicke didn’t know how to talk when he first came, that they had to pry him open and make him. It must be lonely. Of course it is lonely.

But Nicke is frightened at the possibility of meeting him. What would he say; what should he do? _I’m sorry you’re here,_ Nicke fantasises saying, _I’m sorry the universe has decided to punish us both; I’m sorry that staying alive feels painful_. He imagines showing him his scars, his new body: the places where his old, decaying body still is, the hard metal chafed from the clothes they assign him. 

Maybe he would give him his seeds? A small little token of something, Nicke thinks. Shared pain. A way of saying: _I know what they did to you._ How he understands that rotten feeling of being torn apart. He thinks about it now as he curls in the dark over his legs. It feels like they’re fraying. It feels like his whole body is fraying, but never mind that—Nicke will have to get up tomorrow and do as they say again. 

 

::

 

Halfway through Dr. Hedlund’s surgery, Nicke nearly dislodges the medical equipment inside his stomach as he moves to _almost_ slap his face with his hand.

“Stop,” one of the nurses tell him, and Nicke seizes still in an instant. His antennae twitch in apology, but he shifts them back underneath some strands of his hair, as they have asked; Nicke would rather keep them than have them cut off. But here is the problem, see—that Овечкин would not speak to him because he did not have antennae. Maybe it was the way he was built: with a mouth and tongue and teeth. Somehow that doesn’t feel quite right to Nicke, watching the doctors mumble and curse as they peer into his stomach. Nicke hopes that they don’t find the phones. 

Овечкин probably had his own language. That makes Nicke feel angry and stiff all over again, but he couldn’t yank the hope out of his body, even as the doctors start patching him up. He cries out as they cut into him with scalpels, craving, suddenly, this Овечкин, that maybe would understand, who might hold his new, still-growing hands as he backs into the corners of his cell at night. Nicke could tell him about this; watching them with their needles, with their large computers of nothing, of Nicke. His eyelids twitch with this sudden, overwhelming desire, even though it was useless, even though—they might not be friends. Овечкин might not even like him.

What would Nicke do, then? It hurts so badly to think about—the fact that this leftover from another planet might hate him, or maybe he would die in Russia before Nicke gets to meet him, gets to beg him for friendship. Or maybe Nicke would die soon: as part of the military, as a government-sanctioned project. He aches at that. Maybe Овечкин would want to see him too? Maybe he had already come to love Nicke, as he loved this Овечкин, who they let out to the parks, who cried when it rained, who was scared of fire.

 

::

 

Nicke is scared of everything.  

 

::

 

On a Tuesday, Nicke walks into a toy shop and tries to search for a toy, maybe a plushie that looks like a flower. He walks slowly, small step by small step, careful to mind the stitches and the joints still fixing themselves into place, along the aisles. He fancies asking.

 _Do you have a little toy plant?_  

But that sounds stupid, so Nicke keeps to himself, hobbles out of people’s way. He uses his left hand to press his antennae back into his head. An adult is staring at him near the counter, where he’s waiting to pay, to give money, and Nicke ducks from his gaze; aware that he’s too skinny, aware that his shirts hang off the remains of his metal body in an unnatural fashion. But there is nothing to be done about it, so he walks on. 

Turns out there _are_ little toy plants: they’re at the back of the shop, gathering dust. Fingerprints are left where small children tried to grab them and probably could not. There are five of them left on the shelf; how nice of them to keep each other company. Nicke digs out his wallet and counts the cash he has inside—he has enough.

But where would he put it? If they allowed Nicke to have things—it’d be on his table. He’d put his little toy robot beside this fake, sunless plant. They will sit by each other by his children’s books, his puck, his synthetic flowers. No dust; no fingerprints either. Nicke would still keep the seeds in the hole, though, because that is the most important—or maybe the brand new important thing could be this little toy succulent, staring up at him. One of the five.

Except they do not allow Nicke to have things, so Nicke has to make a decision here, in this shop: but it seems obvious. He sorts the coins and the paper back into his wallet. He reaches out to touch one of them, rubbing his fingers over the dust. They have promised him that he will feel with his hands soon... Maybe he would know what it feels like, one day, to wipe away the dust from this toy, and to bring it somewhere.

 

::

 

Nicke cannot help but feel stupid when he does this: to crawl towards one of the sleeping guards, to yank at the leg of his trousers until he catches his attention. But there would not be the courage to do this without pain, and Nicke needs this pain; Nicke needs to remember this pain of waking up with his whole body on fire. He is not in too much pain to forget to put his watch back into the hole in the wall, of course. 

“I want to ask them for something,” Nicke rasps out in his ugly Swedish, when the guard looks down to him, on the floor where he’s half-crouched. “Just one thing,” he promises. “No more fighting.” He wraps his fingers around one of the bars, running them over the gritty texture—it feels awful. “Let me ask, please.”

“Okay,” says the guard, and Nicke slouches back onto the floor, pressing his fingers into his own stomach. He hopes that he is not driven by hunger, but it doesn’t feel like that’s what’s burning into him. He looks back to the hole in the wall, unnoticeable, to where the little toy robot sits alone. He tries to not let hope suffocate him, or maybe it is desperation. 

It is probably both, Nicke thinks, as they drag him to the rooms, whichever one of those rooms are. Four of the doctors stop and stare at him. He has never done this before. He has never asked for anything. He doesn’t know what they will do. Some of them have never heard him talk, but here he is, anyway, on the floor, on his knees. 

And suddenly Nicke feels alight, from hurt, from grief, from misery. It is stupid—but Nicke is in too much pain to think, and it is easier to pretend like someone might still love him here on Earth, where he is alone and patched up like a makeshift rag, with the needlework undone: Nicke will let these doctors programme Russian into his head, and maybe he could explain it one day, then, this stupidity, and maybe Овечкин would hold his hands, and maybe Nicke would feel his fingers, too, the fake elasticity of them, and maybe Овечкин could be someone that understands.

**Author's Note:**

> it hurts to want people to care about you, i think, even knowing they most probably don't. i haven't stopped crying in a week at this, at how it sets you a little bit on fire to hate being alive, to friends uncaring. i haven't slept in a while, from how people sift you through out of their lives like sand—we all know that sasha is a person that stays alive to meet nicke and love him. i don't think i'll ever be somebody to love, but stupidly, i hope that someone will care enough to understand me one day.


End file.
